Predicting the hits and misses for the new television season

STEVE MCKERROW

September 22, 1990|By STEVE MCKERROW

It isn't easy, is it? Readers were quick to respond when this column asked earlier this year for nominations of television shows to save from cancellation, or shows to bring back from prime-times past. But predicting hits and misses of the new season is apparently another story.

A Labor Day Holiday Sun request for some early clairvoyance on the new arrivals has brought a pretty paltry response. Perhaps that is because all the new shows have not yet hit the airwaves, although the original interest was in projections based on early -- hype.

Today's column, therefore, announces a modification to this informal reader's poll: Watch the new shows, then vote for two favorites which deserve continuation and an equal number of shows you think rate quick cancellation. Send responses to: Media Monitor/Steve McKerrow, The Evening Sun, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore 21278, or fax votes to 332-6666.

IN OTHERS' CRYSTAL BALLS -- While we are at it, a couple of viewer organizations have also weighed in with prognostications about the fall season.

For example, Dorothy Swanson, founder of the Virginia-based Viewers for Quality Television, has come up with seven new shows worthy of "quality time" and six shows she suggests as unworthy.

The membership of her group will be asked next month to vote on the season to produce its annual endorsement lists. But Swanson, writing for USA Weekend magazine, suggests that viewers check out these shows: